(no subject)

[ndkid]

• While sitting on the bus on the way up to DC this past weekend, I noticed that when we got onto I-66, some people called their parents, generally to schedule pick-up. Now, I've only spent, all total, about a year in the DC area. To be fair, I do consider myself to be rather smart and specifically good at mental mapping navigation. However, I would assume that the majority of the people I was on the bus with had lived in the DC metro area for several years, and that many, if not most, had driven one of their parents' cars around. Despite that, just about every phone conversation I overheard followed a basic pattern:
  "Mom? Yeah, we're almost there... we're on 66... I don't know, we're on 66... Ummm, we're on 66..."
  This includes the girl sitting beside me, whom I helped by saying "we just passed Manassas," which she passed on to the person she was talking to. Can none of these people read signs or mile markers? Do none of them know which mile marker the Vienna Station is? Or the general progression of Front Royal->Manassas->Centerville->Reston->Vienna?
• Also on the bus ride north, I was listening to Ex-Girlfriend, one of the only No Doubt songs I enjoy, trying to determine why I enjoyed it. It's a bit of an angry song, but it's an angry song I picked up when I wasn't really in an angry mood. So I was trying to find some meaning I could use it for in my life. It struck me in an epiphany that if I characterized myself as deinna's ex-girlfriend, the song mostly worked, and that such a characterization wasn't a huge stretch. The idea pleased/amused me greatly.
• While riding the Metro from Vienna to Metro Center to Gallery to Greenbelt, an attractive older man walked past me to a seat, and I realized that what was missing from my nice clothing set is an overcoat. I suspect I would fill out an overcoat alright... my shoulders are broad enough, though I am a hair thick. The obvious problem is that overcoats belong over suit jackets, and it takes pretty cold weather for me to ever want three long-sleeved layers on at once. Still, overcoats are hot, pun optional.
• Also on that Metro trip, I noticed how silly women in heels look on the Metro. It's even worse than women in heels in general. A shoe that's only inefficient and precariously balanced in normal wear suddenly becomes even more precarious when one is standing on a moving object that frequently accelerates and decelerates 40 miles at a time. I just can't imagine things that thin like to be stood on edge with 100 lbs. on top of them like that. The sadist in me wanted one to break.
• I enjoyed the National Theater's production of Les Mis (bastardized into American by someone too lazy to look up how to make his letters all French-like) more, overall, than the production I saw in Roanoke. The Epinine was most certainly more pleasant and less whiny-sounding. On the down side, Javier was unfortunately having a bad night, and his voice broke a couple of times. Also, the flag waver wasn't nearly as impressive and active as the one in the tour that hit Roanoke... he pulled it across a couple of times and called it a day. I realize it's heavy, but you'd think he'd be working on his arm strength as a result...
• I know own more Babylon 5 CCG cards than I ought to, and am only further proving to myself that old, cheap CCGs really are a better deal than new, popular CCGs. Dead is just cheaper and easier to collect. On the other hand, I grant that modern Magic is probably the best balanced CCG on the market ever.
• jazzfish is now a full-time employee of VirPack, at least for now. This pleases me greatly. He is a force multiplier for my productivity the way that tank support is for troop actions and clerics are in fantasy MMORPGs. I like to hope that the fact that half the company really appreciates the work that he does (and a quarter of the company works in Vienna and therefore doesn't know the work that he does) makes the work at least somewhat worth it for him.
• Carbon Leaf will be in Burruss the first week of Feb.
• Several people seriously answered my last meme. I was surprised
• My current set of contacts isn't quite right. It's like they're a hair off, throwing me back toward 20/40, instead of the 20/15 I'd been having with contacts so far. I can't figure out why. I suppose I ought to toss them, even though I just put them in less than a week ago, and try another pair.